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San Jose City Councilman Xavier Campos wouldn't answer questions in front of a criminal grand jury regarding a scandal involving his former boss and former supervisor, George Shirakawa. But he answered questions for NBC Bay Area. Damian Trujillo reports. (Published Thursday, Nov 14, 2013)

Updated at 6:31 PM PST on Thursday, Nov 14, 2013

He wouldn’t answer questions in front of a criminal grand jury, but he answered ours.

San Jose Councilman Xavier Campos was questioned under oath regarding the campaign mailing scandal involving his former boss and former supervisor, George Shirakawa. He invoked the Fifth Amendment. Now, at least one legal analyst says, what he told NBC Bay Area could get him in trouble.

Shirakawa Sentenced to a Year in County Jail

Former Santa Clara County Supervisor George Shirakawa Jr. was sentenced to one year in county jail and three years proparation for charges the include public misuse of funds, fueled by his self-acknowledged gambling habit. Chase Cain reports. (Published Friday, Nov 8, 2013)

Campos is telling NBC Bay Area what he wouldn’t tell a criminal grand jury a month ago: “My confidence in being treated fairly was not there.”

DNA Links Former Supervisor to New Criminal Case

The Santa Clara County District Attorney charged a disgraced former county supervisor with a new allegation Wednesday, using the politician's DNA to link him to false impersonation during a San Jose city council race in 2010. Kim Tere reports (Published Wednesday, Jun 5, 2013)

The grand jury was investigating ex-Supervisor Shirakawa and mailers sent during Campos’s election campaign for city council.

The district attorney says Shirakawa’s DNA is on one of those mailers.

Shirakawa was also Campos’s boss for some time.

The mailers were sent to Vietnamese-American voters, and they were emblazoned with the flag of communist Vietnam. The mailers implied Campos’s opponent at the time, Magdalena Carrasco, was aligned with communist Vietnam.

Campos narrowly defeated Carrasco in the race.

NBC Bay Area asked Campos, “Your name is attached to the mailers. It’s assumed it came from your camp. People ask, How can you not know?” Campos replied: “I need to be clear and make this very, very clear. I do not know who produced or distributed those mailers and I had nothing to do with producing and distributing those mailers. I had nothing to do with those mailers."

That’s something the grand jury wanted to hear. But Campos refused to testify, invoking the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination.

Campos said the fact that he pleaded the Fifth should not imply that he couldn’t answer the grand jury’s questions because he might implicate himself criminally further on, if the case proceeds.

“Because he doesn’t trust the process, that’s not a valid reason to assert the Fifth," Clark said.

Clark said the DA can now force Campos to testify to the grand jury or the pending Shirakawa trial on the mailers, because Campos in essence waived his Fifth Amendment privilege by talking to NBC Bay Area.

“It’s certainly a very big legal problem for him,” said Clark, a former prosecutor. “Clearly, the DA, after they see these statements, can say, ‘We want to bring him back to the grand jury and ask him these same questions.’"

In a statement, Santa Clara District Attorney Jeff Rosen would only say, “The grand jury transcript speaks for itself.”

The Campos camp said he used the Fifth Amendment appropriately and will answer all his constituents’ questions about the matter.

“All I can do is continue to do the hard work that I do working in my community," Campos said.